Leslie Owens' Blog

Yesterday, HP agreed to buy UK software firm Autonomy Corp. for $10 billion to move into the enterprise information management (EIM) software business. HP wants to add IP to its portfolio, build next-generation information platforms, and create a vehicle for services. It is following IBM’s strategy of acquiring software to sell to accompany its hardware and services. With Autonomy under its wing, HP plans to help enterprises with a big, complicated problem – how to manage unstructured information for competitive advantage. Here’s the wrinkle – Autonomy hasn’t solved that problem. In fact, it’s not a pure technology problem because content is so different than data. It’s a people, process problem, too.

Here is the Autonomy overview that HP gave investors yesterday:

Of course, this diagram doesn’t look like the heterogeneous environment of a typical multinational enterprise. Autonomy has acquired many companies to fill in the boxes here, but the reality is that companies have products from a smorgasbord of content management vendors but no incentive to stick with any one of them.